There are many here who can answer your questions, but I am going to school you on something else:

Practicing 8 hours a day is no good. Quite a bit of wasted time is contained in those 8 hours.

People learn parts at home. You put things together at practice.

People work up song ideas at home. You put things together at practice.

Get more organized with your rehearsal time, and everyone's quality of life will benefit. Trust me.

====================

MadTiger3000 wrote: There are many here who can answer your questions, but I am going to school you on something else:

Practicing 8 hours a day is no good. Quite a bit of wasted time is contained in those 8 hours.

People learn parts at home. You put things together at practice.

People work up song ideas at home. You put things together at practice.

Get more organized with your rehearsal time, and everyone's quality of life will benefit. Trust me.

====================

we already have our parts down to the wire
they have the parts down
we just fine tune
and get everything perfectly in tempo
we practiced individual parts for 5 months
evryday for at least 3 hours
and now we're just fine tuning things

so now instead of criticism
pleas answer what this topic was about

Hey Bigmouth, On should usually be polite and thank someone who was kind enough to give you good free solid advice when it is clear that they have much more expertse, wisdom and skills than you do, or will likely ever achieve. Why don't you use what little clue you have about recording and gear, get off your lazy ass, and try to use the search engine first.

AudioGaff wrote: Hey Bigmouth, On should usually be polite and thank someone who was kind enough to give you good free solid advice when it is clear that they have much more expertse, wisdom and skills than you do, or will likely ever achieve. Why don't you use what little clue you have about recording and gear, get off your lazy ass, and try to use the search engine first.

we have done that
but all we get is high end stuff
what equipment should we get
we already have protools
and Mobilepro USB
but our biggest problem
is recording drums
what should we get to record
a double bass kit?

and sorry
I have problems with extreme anger
I am currently going to therapy for it
so forgive me

Good luck in that anger management therapy.

First you say you need gear and now you say you have an M-audio USB interface and protools. Redefine or repharase your question. If you need additional inputs, then you either need an interface that has as many inputs as you need, or you need something like an external mixer.

The info is around here, you just need to apply some effort in searching to find it. Go back and start reading past postings in this forum, the Home/Project Studio forum, and the DAW forums. Yes, it might take you several days to read and find some good nuggets of wisdom. Such is life when it comes to FREE advice.

If you are in a hurry or don't want to spend the time to educate yourself with the free advice around here, then go to someplace like Guitar Center where they are more than happy to teach you about and sell you low budget products.

As Audiograff recomended you would want to look at a mixer with at least 4 mic preamps. This is needed to submix the drums. Yamaha, Soundcraft, and Mackie are good brands. You will also want to look up drum mics. Shure SM57 is one often recomended. You pretty much have to go this route as the Maudio Mobilepro only has two inputs. You can either track each instrument seperate or with a big enough mixer record the group live. The mixer in my opinion it is worth it because you will need a mixer for vocals on stage anyway. Our band used to rent the amp speakers and monitors but found owning the mixer gave us the ability to become really familiar with the setup and how to use it.

If you are expecting more than demo quality this setup will fall short. If you just need to do demos this setup should be good enough.

You are right. The hardest part is going to be getting the drums tracks to sound good. It will take a lot of experimentation but it is possible with persistence. Hope it all works out.

Best Wishes Guys

I'm doing the same thing that you are trying to do. Buy all these things and you will have great quality for the price. Emu 0404 sound card($100). Also get a few shure sm57 microphones ($100 each). A behringer Xenyx 502 mixer ($45) is great too. To record your guitar, buy a Behringer V-amp2 ($100) and go from the v-amp straight to the sound card. Trust me, and buy all this stuff, you will be more than satisfied.

Come on sal...you can do better then that. It's kind of early in the game to be quoting your own posts don't ya think:)

Brien

Space wrote: Come on sal...you can do better then that. It's kind of early in the game to be quoting your own posts don't ya think:)

Brien

I whole heartedly AGREE. I love how just a mere 2-3 weeks ago, this guy was asking me a billion questions about even the most basic stuff over the AOL IM. I'm certainly no expert but I answered what I could to the best of my knowledge and told him to check this site out, read around, and that it's a great resource. I also said to feel free to ask questions if you have a problem AND IT HASN'T ALREADY BEEN ADDRESSED by searching the forums. Interesting....

salamichrist wrote: I'm doing the same thing that you are trying to do. Buy all these things and you will have great quality for the price. Emu 0404 sound card($100). Also get a few shure sm57 microphones ($100 each). A behringer Xenyx 502 mixer ($45) is great too. To record your guitar, buy a Behringer V-amp2 ($100) and go from the v-amp straight to the sound card. Trust me, and buy all this stuff, you will be more than satisfied.

Now to correct this, Salami:

Your EMU 0404 is actually (AT LEAST on the surface) inferior to the interface that he already has (the M-Audio MobilePre USB). The EMU 0404 has two analog in's and out's as well as SPDIF and MIDI. The M-Audio has two instrument in's (eliminating the need for a direct box) and stereo out's as well as two XLR in's. It still appears to be just a 2 channel interface, but at least it has the XLR inputs. It also has "phantom power." Not to mention, it has an 1/8" line out and headphone output for those using computer speakers (buy monitors) and earbuds or comparable. Plus, it has it's own physical volume and gain controls. So, really, the only thing the EMU has that the M-Audio doesn't is MIDI and SPDIF and those are not really necessary for what this guy says he wants to do. In fact, if this guy were to sell his M-Audio for an EMU I'd have to resort to "four-letter words" to properly describe his incompetence.

Had YOU purchased the M-Audio to begin with, you would not have had to buy the mixer that you bought AND you would have phantom power as well as maybe an extra $20 or so in your pocket http://cgi.ebay.com/M-AUDIO-MOBILEPRE-USB-NIB-FACTORY-SEALED_W0QQitemZ130135761972QQcmdZViewItem Oh, it also comes with a legit copy of Ableton Lite and Cubase LE in addition to other software. So you also wouldn't be using pirated software that has the potential to screw-up your computer and/or your finances if caught. As I said to you before, I could really careless about people using pirated software, but if you can, avoid it. I standby that.

Now, he said he needed to mic up a double-bass drum-set that would require AT LEAST 4 channels/inputs. The M-Audio only has two (2) channels and the EMU only has two (2) channels. So, yes, I suppose he could get an EMU to supplement the M-Audio but then he would need some sort of pre-amp or mixer. And the 502? Only one (1) mic pre-amp onboard and no phantom power (if needed), so he would need an 802 at the minimum. At that point he's already spent more than it would cost to just buy an additional M-Audio MobilePre USB that he's already familiar with using. So far, the only thing you've said that I can sort of agree to (since I gave you this advice) is the need for a 57. In my opinion, they're great on guitar cabs, vocals (if you gotta), and snares. That is certainly up for interpretation, but hey, that's me.

So, your last two statements:

buy a Behringer V-amp2 ($100) and go from the v-amp straight to the sound card.

No, the V-amp is a guitar effects processor. If this band is really as hot shit as he implies they are, I'm SURE their guitarist(s) has/have a nice amp(s) (Marshall, Mesa, or the like) and they probably have their own effects pedals (if they even use them). Bottom line: They have their "Sound" already. So, why would they want to run their guitar through some foreign effects processor when they have their $1500 amp and $500 in effects pedals? I don't know... think about it.

Trust me, and buy all this stuff, you will be more than satisfied.

..... Do I REALLY NEED TO SAY ANYTHING?

Now, I don't mean to discourage you, but more so "put you in your place." You've BARELY even gotten your toes wet, let alone your feet wet, in 'recording' and you're giving (bad) advice out like your swimming. I'd hate to see you give advice to someone that has potentially even less experience than you with recording and not even point them in the right direction, but the TOTAL OPPOSITE direction in which they should go. Now, I know I sound like I'm on a soap box here, but if you read Salami's other posts, you might understand and since I recommended him to this site I feel I should be the one to, I guess,.......... point out his egregious advice.

Anywho, keep on truckin'
-Patrick

lol- Have to say I am not sold on the gear salamichrist is promoting.

blabbermouth->What does "small sums of money =?"

I just honestly don't know how many times I can answer this question without losing it...

If you want "Great sound quality for a low cost" the ONLY option (and I mean ONLY) is to go to a professional studio and spend your money there. Not a basement studio, not your buddy's house who has a behringer mixer and a cracked copy of cubase...a REAL studio.

If you want a passable sound, you can get by with crappy (or "inexpensive") gear. The key is, you have to know your expectations and your limitations.

Beyond that, even if I sold you the highest end gear on the planet it wouldn't do a darned bit of good! You have to get an education in audio.

Granted, audio is one of those things you can "pick up" as you go along. But, don't expect to be any good at it for at least the first 5 years. If you get good results in that time frame, it's more likely *luck* and certainly not repeatable every time.

I'm sorry if I'm appearing harsh - it's not my intent (although many will probably attest to my dick-headedness quite vehemently). It's just impractical to think that you can spend a few hundred dollars and get a great sound. Mics are expensive, cables are expensive, software is expensive, preamps or mixers are expensive...knowledge is.....priceless...;-)

Cheers -

Jeremy

I'm with Jeremy here. In the short run, for one or two CDs, there is just no way that you can save money by buying recording equipment and doing it yourself. This is especially true if you have a well rehearsed band with a clear idea about what you want to record. The advantage to having equipment is that you can mess around, experiment with different sounds, try new ideas. If you have your music already worked out you will save a lot of time and money going to a pro studio, and you will be able to record on far better equipment than you can afford to buy.

What it comes down to is do you want to be musicians or recording engineers?

You can spend the money to go and get equipment to record your band. Then you could spend the time to learn how to use that equipment. Then you could spend time learning how to record. But by that time, several months may have passed you by and all you'll have to show for it are some demo quality recordings. There's nothing wrong with that. If you are looking to get signed, a decent demo can do the job. But if you are looking to produce a good CD to distribute/sell, I'd recommend a different route...as recommended by Bob and Cucco

Instead of the marathon practice, just do a few hours a day. Get in more hours at your "day jobs". Save up the cash and put it towards some studio time.

It sounds like you guys are well rehearsed and that really helps to save time in the studio. With a few hundred dollars you should be able to book enough time to lay down a track or two and have it mixed.

Having said that...if you still want to do it yourself, and want to separate everything out, you need a multi channel interface. 2 or 4 channels are too much of a hassle. Get something that has at least 8 channels that include mic pre-amps...something like the MOTU 8pre or PreSonus Firepod. That will allow you to record 8 discrete tracks at once. You may not be able to record the whole band at one time...but you could get all the drums and possibly bass and/or vocal. Then you could record everything else afterwards.